by Cathy
Last week was Holy Week for those of the Orthodox faith. This includes me. It was also the same week my two girls were on spring break and conveniently, but shittily, the same week my husband sprained (nearly broke) his ankle. And what's more? The week rounded itself out with yet ANOTHER bout of the stomach flu for me - caught this time, from Ari.
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| Our Easter mascot: half-bitten ears and cycloped. So symbolic of Holy Week craziness. |
Our Orthodox Holy Week began in a most unorthodox way: a passover seder. Every year we get invited to attend a seder with the kids and this year, it happened to fall the Saturday before Palm Sunday. We stuffed ourselves with matzo, brisket, potato pancakes, kugel and wine, had coffee around the patio fire pit (scotch and cigars for the men) and called it a night around 10pm since we had to get up bright and early the next morning to get a seat in church for Palm Sunday services.
This officially kicked off Holy Week.
Palm Sunday - the girls and I get to church a bit late, but miraculously end up with one of the final spots in the church lot, and thanks to our koumbaro Nick, who is Ari's godfather, on the parish council and an usher, we landed some rockstar seats in the third pew - one of the last available spots. Once we were there for a while, we knew why. The dude in front of us was completely crazeballs and he kept turning around to talk to me every time we sneezed, coughed, shifted, the girls whispered, whatever. He looked like Jim Carrey on speed, (if that's even possible), his crazed eyes widening with every word through his ginormous black-rimmed glasses. He told me about how he knew Betty Ford, about the JFK assassination, bedbugs and many other random things before I loudly shushed him into silence. The lady next to him, also not altogether there but very nice, kept asking me in Greek throughout the whole service: "What's he saying? What's he saying?!?!" Holy Moly.
Holy Monday - I promised the girls we would make Greek Easter cookies (koulouria). Bella looks forward to this every year since she was three because it's our mommy-daughter tradition. Now Ari has joined in on the anticipation and the process of making these complex sweets. They especially love creating different shapes - usually the first letters of all their friends' names.
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| What koulouria should look like |
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| My daughters' version of koulouria |
Holy Tuesday - the only non-eventful day in our week. There were church services, of course, like there are every day this week, but we opted not to go. It was our day of rest.
Holy Wednesday - I had to leave work early to pick up the girls, amazingly already dressed in their church clothes, for the service of Holy Unction. This is where the recipient is blessed by the priest with a "cleansing of the sins" prayer, while making the sign of the cross with holy oil on your forehead, both cheeks, chin (the sign of the cross on your face) and on both palms and backs of your hand. The girls and I rubbed the holy oil into our skin and let it seep, heal, de-sin and cleanse our souls.
Holy Thursday - this is the day that is designated for egg dyeing. (The only other day we are allowed to dye eggs is on Holy Saturday. Not exactly sure why, but these are the 'rules'.) We Greeks don't pastel up our eggs, or use that PAAS stuff, or mix in liquid food coloring to color eggs. We use the heavy duty blood-red powdered food coloring imported from Greece. Why? Because that's the stuff. The eggs are meant to symbolize the blood that Jesus shed for our salvation, so the eggs, in essence, are stained with his blood. Now of course the kids didn't think this was as fun as PAAS-ing or liquid food coloring up the eggs. So we made two batches. And they had fun.
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| Ours Greek eggs are red, but I've seen some seriously dark, blood-red eggs. |
Holy Friday - well...is Good Friday...a day of mourning. No music is allowed on that day out of respect for the crucified Christ. There are TWO church services this day - one in the afternoon, where Christ is symbolically taken down from the cross and laid into an epitaph, and one in the evening, which is spent singing mournful, beautiful hymns while holding lit candles and walking outside the church in a funeral-like procession. Since it can be exhausting for the kids to do both, we usually go to the afternoon service. This year, however, the girls wanted to do a morning retreat at the church, where they could decorate the epitaph with countless flowers and pack food for various food pantries in the area. Both activities were amazing experiences for my girls.
Holy Saturday - it's 9am and I'm up and at church again, this time, to receive Holy Communion. I had fasted (Bella referred to it as going vegan) for the past three days to prepare for this. (The girls received it on Palm Sunday).
Once at home after some other activities that day, I prepared for the night service. How? Taking a nap, forcing the girls to nap but to no avail, making some coffee around 6pm and keeping myself up for another 6-8 hours. Holy Saturday midnight mass is the mother of all Easter services. This is one that my girls look forward to every year. We go to church at 11pm, sit in the dimly lit church and listen to the beautiful chanting, and at midnight, sitting reverently in a blacked out church, save for the light coming in from the magnificent stained glass windows, we gloriously, one-by-one light our candles, the lights of which look like the swelling of a wave from the front to the back of the church, and joyously sing that Christ Has Risen! We make the sign of the cross with our lit candles in the air (the girls hold decorative candles, like most of the children do), while singing, and it's just all so magical.
What wasn't magical, was what we encountered as we attempted to exit the church. Just as we were about to head out, lit candles in tow, careful to bring the light of the resurrection to our homes as we do every year, thunderstorms, lightening and torrential rains flash flooded the streets. By the time we got into the car, Ari had lost her purse in a puddle one-foot deep, which had to be fished out by me, Bella stepped squarely into that same puddle in her haste to get into the car and I? Looked like I had just taken a dip in a pool. Even my underwear was sopping. Shivering in the car, we hightailed it home, changed in to warm, cozy clothes, waited out the storm and drove to my parents' house at 1a.m. - kids in tow and Joe in crutches.
Then, the feasting began. Nearly every year, my family and my sister's family gathers at my parents' house for a casual meal of lamb, salad and oven roasted potatoes after the midnight Anastasi service. Other Greeks reserve tables at Greek restaurants and do it up even bigger. Typically, this meal should consist of mageritsa, a mish mash of lamb innards: sweetbreads, lungs, intestines, brain, all in a brothy, soupy concoction. Thank goodness we opted for lamb this year. We ended up going to sleep at about 3:30a.m. and awoke on Easter Sunday around noon, got ready and drove to my uncle's house in Grayslake to feast yet again.
Easter Sunday - The fun part of this day is to hang out in the open garage, watching the lamb roast right outside with its tongue hanging out onto the steel rod that has been shoved up from his ass through his mouth and is rotating on an electrical roasting spit. We grilled some Greek sausage and some more sweetbreads, cracked some of those blood red eggs, listened to Greek music and perhaps spun a dance or two, told some funny stories and practically ate the whole lamb while it was being chopped up on the table, piping hot; the best way to eat lamb, take it from a Greek.
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| This is how we do it. |
The rest of the day and night was filled with more food and stories and then it was time to go home. We were all exhausted. The torrential downpours decided to resume again Sunday night as we were driving back into the city. Mist, hail, buckets of rain, fog, lights were all hitting the car from every direction making it impossible to drive. Ari was asleep in the back seat and Bella was relaxing - we were almost home. Then....BLAGHCKCKH. The all-too familiar sound of vomit. Ari threw up in her seat - the onset of the stomach flu I was bound to get and still have. She not only threw up in the car, but in my bedroom, the girls' bedroom, the bathroom and on her bed. Since Joe is still crutcheting around, I had clean up all those messes AND do two loads of laundry at 9:45pm. Just the perfect "topping" to my sundae of a Week.
Rain and Holy Week and stomach flu, now go away,
Come again when I'm less stressed (and not all at once), Okaaaayyyy???
